The Rangers’ performance bonus issue gets complicated

The Connor McDavid example

In 2015 Connor McDavid signed his ELC with the maximum of $2,850,000 in performance bonuses.  Despite playing only 45 games due to an injury, he received the whole bonus because he hit some of his targets.  In his second year he played a full season and maxed out on his performance bonus by hitting seven of his Category A targets and three of his Category B targets.  His third season was even better so he made the full $2.85 million in performance bonuses.

In his first year he hit four category  A targets for $850k and by finishing in the top ten in points per game, he made an additional $2 million.

You can see how these performance bonuses are structured in the player’s favor.  In McDavid’s case he made the full $2 million in category B by achieving just one of the ten targets, which he did despite missing half the season with a shoulder injury.  He barely made it though as he needed to play in 42 games to qualify for the points per game average and he played in 45.  If he had not played the requisite 42 games he would have made $850k in performance bonus money in that first season.

Performance bonus realities for the Rangers

First, we have to make it clear, we don’t know what the bonus structure is for any individual Ranger player.  We only know what the total potential performance bonus is and not how it is broken down. Based on the McDavid contract, we can make some assumptions that most contracts are similar though there is no way of really knowing.  All of the websites that track salary cap information like capfriendly.com, spotrac.com and puckpedia.com don’t have that information and don’t even know how much a player on an ELC really made as the teams do not reveal that information.

For example, Kaapo Kakko has a maximum performance bonus of $2,650,000.  There is no way of knowing if he made any performance bonus money last season. Looking at his statistics, it’s easy to assume that he didn’t.

Adam Fox is a different story.   He definitely earned performance bonus money last season. Here are the criteria for defenseman:

• Top six defenseman on the team in average ice time
• 10 goals
• 25 assists
• 40 points
• .49 points per game average
• Top three defenseman in plus/minus
• Top two defenseman in blocked shots
• NHL All-Rookie team selection
• NHL All-Star  Game selection
• NHL All-Star Game MVP selection

Fox’s performance bonus target was $850k and if he made the maximum $212,500 for any of these categories he did well.  He achieved his targets in all statistical categories except goals.  That probably means he made his $850k performance bonus, but we will never really know. What’s interesting is that it appears that Fox has no category B performance bonus targets in his contract.

So what is the performance bonus issue for the Rangers?  The big three are Lafrenière , Kakko and Shesterkin.  What is the likelihood that any of those three will hit their targets and max out?